Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants stops to meet with Giants legend Willie Mays after he was named the National League Cy young Award winner today for the second straight year. Lincecum and Mays at the Giants clubhouse at AT&T Ballpark in San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday November 19, 2009.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants stops to meet with Giants...

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Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants, with manager Bruce Bochy, (left) Dave Reghetti and Brian Sabean,(right) attend a press conference after he was named the National League Cy young Award winner today for the second straight year. Lincecum attended a news conference at AT&T Ballpark in San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday November 19, 2009.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants, with manager Bruce Bochy,...

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Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants, listens to his manager Bruce Bochy during a press conference after he was named the National League Cy young Award winner today for the second straight year. Lincecum at AT&T Ballpark in San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday November 19, 2009.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants, listens to his manager...

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Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants was named the National League Cy young Award winner today for the second straight year. Lincecum attended a news conference at AT&T Ballpark in San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday November 19, 2009. Lincecum reads a statement at the end of the press conference in regards to his marijuana possession charge in Washington State.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants was named the National...

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Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants was named the National League Cy young Award winner today for the second straight year. Lincecum attended a news conference at AT&T Ballpark in an Francisco, Calif. on Thursday November 19, 2009.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants was named the National...

Image 6 of 7

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants, with manager Bruce Bochy,(left) Dave Reghetti and Brian Sabean,(right) attend a press conference after he was named the National League Cy young Award winner today for the second straight year. Lincecum attended a news conference at AT&T Ballpark in San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday November 19, 2009.

Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants, with manager Bruce...

Image 7 of 7

Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants was named the National League Cy young Award winner today for the second straight year. Lincecum attended a news conference at AT&T Ballpark in San Francisco, Calif. on Thursday November 19, 2009.

As Tim Lincecum walked from interview to interview on his Cy Young celebrity walk, Brian Sabean kept asking to anyone who approached him, "How do you quantify this?"

He meant other than "two," the number of consecutive National League Cy Young Awards that Lincecum now owns. He was thinking in terms of millions, as in, "How many millions will our arbitration filing differ from Lincecum's, and how much of a hit can we afford to take and still find some hitters for 2010?"

It's a very open question, because nobody has ever won two successive Cys in his first two full years, so when Sabean asks, "How do you quantify this?" he's asking not how he quantifies it, but how Lincecum's agent, Rick Thurman, decides to quantify it, and how the arbitration panel that would hear the case would quantify it.

In other words, what Sabean wants to know is, "How do other people put a dollar sign on something that's never happened before?"

"You're trying to figure out what the other side is going to think, how big the gap's going to be, a lot of things go into it," he said after the Lincecum presser at which the pitcher celebrated Cy 2.0 and apologized off the cuff for his little vehicular incident in Washington on Oct. 30. "But I don't think it's going to be so bad that it could affect our ability to do the other things we want to do. We're pretty elastic on that. We've left wiggle room for that, and the (Brian) Wilson arbitration and the (Jonathan) Sanchez arbitration."

But whether they left enough wiggle room is largely a matter of how much Lincecum, Thurman and the Major league Baseball Players Association want to claim as their due. The closest parallel anyone can come up with is the Ryan Howard arbitration, in which the Phillies offered $7 million and Howard, coming off an MVP season in 2007, filed for $10 million. Howard was annoyed with the Phillies' figure, won his case, and a year later signed a three-year, $54 million deal to avoid a $14 million-$18 million arbitration case.

"But Howard was an everyday guy, so I don't know how much of a parallel there is," Sabean said. "That's why this is so interesting."

Sabean doesn't want to lowball Lincecum; oh, he'd do it if Lincecum insisted, but he's assuming that Lincecum knows his value, or at least knows people who know it and would prevent any Bolshevik notions like a hometown discount.

So the greater likelihood is that the Giants will come in with a number that wouldn't offend, something in the high seven figures, and hope that Lincecum's number isn't in, say, the mid-teens. These are our numbers, not Sabean's. Sabean doesn't talk numbers for strategic as well as tactical reasons.

They are not outrageously wrong, though, because the Phillies paid two steep prices for trying to underbid on Howard - the arbitration loss and the ensuing contract. Thus, the agonizing guesswork of how to come close without coming too close, and still have extra money lying about for some of the Tier II free agents that won't cost as much as Jason Bay but might pay off as though they were.

Yes, this is a little too money-ish on a day when Lincecum did something of particular value. But consider how differently this issue might have played had one of the 11 Lincecum voters decided to vote for Chris Carpenter, and the guy who voted for Javier Vazquez and not Carpenter had been more willing to follow the crowd. That would mean that Lincecum isn't a two-time Cy Young winner, and therefore isn't an unprecedented arbitration case.

Which is why Sabean asked, "How do you quantify this?"

"The arbitrators would have to figure out what would be more important - say, a guy who wins 22 games and throws 230 innings, or two Cy Youngs," Sabean said.

"I don't know what the answer would be to that, and I don't know if the arbitrators would, either. They'd have to look at other comparables, I would think, and Timmy isn't really comparable to many pitchers. And that's if it went to arbitration, which I think everyone on both sides would rather avoid. I mean, arbitration is a pretty unpleasant process."

He swears the Giants are ready for all but the most outrageous figure, and will not blink when it comes. He also knows that there is no long-term contract to be had until this arbitration cycle is over, because Lincecum's people know that this is where his initial value will be set, just as Howard's arbitration victory set his longer-term value.

He is, in short, talking like this is no big deal for the Giants - I mean, it is a big deal, just not a big deal they didn't see coming.